Volume 51, Issue 1

In Eberswalde (Brandenburg), a model house estate built in 1931 by Hirsch Kupfer- und Messingwerke has been preserved. The special feature of the eight house types built in lightweight construction is their outer skin of copper sheets. The structure consists of wall segments prefabricated in the factory, which were plugged together on the building site using patented connecting elements. One of the houses was built under the supervision of Walter Gropius, who for a short period of time was in charge of the factory’s house construction department. Here he tried to realize his idea of the building kit on a large scale, in which houses were to be produced on stock in factories. A considerable amount of plans as well as correspondence prove how profoundly Gropius was concerned with the development of the copper houses.

The construction experience of M.A.N. company was reflected in the M.A.N. steel house in the sophisticated panel construction and the simplicity of the joints. The designers met the requirement of creating a modern functional home with the exceptionally high-quality façade modules, efficient insulation, double-glazing of the windows and integration of the most modern building services for maximum living comfort. With the standardisation of construction elements, M.A.N. chimed with the spirit of the times, and the extremely short construction time of just a few weeks was also advantageous. While the contemporary clients appreciated performance and equipment, the traditional shape imitating cubature and façade design failed. Responding to the clients’ wishes by developing variations distinguished the M.A.N. steel house as the most flexible prefabricated house. At the same time, it was precisely the individualisation that brought the manufacturing company disproportionately high production costs and prevented profitable series production.

The steel prefabricated family house ›Quelle-Fertighaus‹ designed and constructed by the German company Quelle, is an innovative modular system commercialised in 1962. All aspects of the Quelle-Fertighaus are planned on the principle of minimal effort for maximal flexibility. The clever design of the ground plan based on a 4 m × 7 m module offers the flexibility for either one to three additional modules. The steel construction is innovative and unique, consisting of load-bearing portal frames acting as braces. The house design is furthermore characterised by a simple metrical grid layout and the practical placement of the foundation and basement, which allowed the very cost-effective production and the lowest price for a prefabricated family house in Germany during the postwar era. Nowadays its portal-frame-construction offers an interesting approach for its renovation and transformation according to present building demands.

In the mid-1950s the Hoesch steel company invested in the diversification of its products and started to develop plastic-coated steel. This composite material was named Platal, meaning ›plated steel‹. The trademark was registered in the early 1930s and is valid until today; production in the post-war era ranged from powder compacts and containers for the chemical industry to construction elements for prefabricated houses. During a phase of generally intensified advertised building with prefabricated elements in West Germany in the late 1950s/early 1960s, Hoesch started cooperative ventures with companies, engineers and architects experienced in system construction, like Ernst Neufert, and to expand existing production facilities. This chapter discusses the planning, decision-making and production processes of these prefabricated houses from a material and fabrication point of view.

In the 1950s the Dortmund-based steel manufacturer Hoesch developed a process of coating strip steel with synthetic material naming the product Platal. One idea of selling Platal was using it for serially prefabricated bungalows. In the spring of 1964, the first prefabricated steel bungalows could be delivered. But instead of selling 1.000 houses per year as planned, the estimation is that until the end of production in 1966 only 150 to 200 unities had been produced in various sizes. Seven of those steel bungalows were erected by Hoesch in Hombruch, a southern suburb of Dortmund, and were rented out to senior executives of Hoesch.